He breakfasted alone in the room where they had danced.  There were two letters for him.  One from his guardian enclosing money, and complaining of the shyness of the trout; the other from his sister.  The man she was engaged to—­he was a budding diplomat, attached to the Embassy at Rome—­was afraid that his leave was going to be curtailed.  They would have to be married at once.  They might even have to get a special licence.  It was lucky Mark was coming back so soon.  They simply must have him for best man.  The only bridesmaid now would be Sylvia. . . .  Sylvia Doone?  Why, she was only a kid!  And the memory of a little girl in a very short holland frock, with flaxen hair, pretty blue eyes, and a face so fair that you could almost see through it, came up before him.  But that, of course, was six years ago; she would not still be in a frock that showed her knees, or wear beads, or be afraid of bulls that were never there.  It was stupid being best man—­they might have got some decent chap!  And then he forgot all—­for there was she, out on the terrace.  In his rush to join her he passed several of the ‘English Grundys,’ who stared at him askance.  Indeed, his conduct of the night before might well have upset them.  An Oxford man, fainting in an hotel!  Something wrong there! . . .

And then, when he reached her, he did find courage.

“Was it really moonlight?”

“All moonlight.”

“But it was warm!”

And, when she did not answer that, he had within him just the same light, intoxicated feeling as after he had won a race at school.

But now came a dreadful blow.  His tutor’s old guide had suddenly turned up, after a climb with a party of Germans.  The war-horse had been aroused in Stormer.  He wished to start that afternoon for a certain hut, and go up a certain peak at dawn next day.  But Lennan was not to go.  Why not?  Because of last night’s faint; and because, forsooth, he was not some stupid thing they called ’an expert.’  As if—!  Where she could go he could!  This was to treat him like a child.  Of course he could go up this rotten mountain.  It was because she did not care enough to take him!  She did not think him man enough!  Did she think that he could not climb what—­ her husband—­could?  And if it were dangerous she ought not to be going, leaving him behind—­that was simply cruel!  But she only smiled, and he flung away from her, not having seen that all this grief of his only made her happy.

And that afternoon they went off without him.  What deep, dark thoughts he had then!  What passionate hatred of his own youth!  What schemes he wove, by which she might come back, and find him gone-up some mountain far more dangerous and fatiguing!  If people did not think him fit to climb with, he would climb by himself.  That, anyway, everyone admitted, was dangerous.  And it would be her fault.  She would be sorry then.  He would